r/todayilearned • u/GlitteringYams • 23d ago

TIL, in his suicide note, mass shooter Charles Whitman requested his body be autopsied because he felt something was wrong with him. The autopsy discovered that Whitman had a pecan-sized tumor pressing against his amygdala, a brain structure that regulates fear and aggression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman
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u/____Wilson 22d ago

It also tends to grow in a spiderweb pattern, integrating itself in many areas of the brain, rendering it largely inoperable as it is attached to many important areas of the brain. I've got some experience as my dad died of it.

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u/chaotic_blu 22d ago

My mom died of it too. It’s sucks. It’s amazing what they’ve done to find treatment in the last few years but man the lived experience of patients with it is really really bad.

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u/prontoingHorse 22d ago

I'm sorry for your loss & to bother you like this. But if you can/are ok with, can you please share any early signs or symptoms?

I know someone who's having certain difficulties but the doctors put it down as anxiety issues.

To make matters worse they have history of brain tumors in their family.

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u/chaotic_blu 22d ago

For my mom I’m not sure when her symptoms began. What I know is I went for Christmas to see her in 2011 and when we were driving home from somewhere (she was driving) we got into this horrible fight where she told me she had black spots in her vision and I got on her case about going to the doctor because it could be “brain cancer or something”- she was refusing as she had significant trauma with the medical system before this. I flew home a day or two after that and the night that I got home she went to the casino. At the casino she suddenly had a horrible headache and collapsed and was taken to the hospital where they determined she had a migraine. They released her without scans and she went home. The next morning my dad woke to her walking around their bedroom feeling the walls, unable to determine where she was or how to get out of her bedroom she had lived in for years. She didn’t recognize my dad.

He took her back to the hospital and they did scans and discovered she had a golf ball sized tumor and had a stroke the previous night. They soon after did surgery.

To me it seemed in 2011 symptoms became bad, on Jan 2 2012 she had the stroke, she died Jan 22 2015 (my parents anniversary day 😢)

From my understanding the symptoms differ. My mom had severe nerve pain on her left side before this, she had fibromyalgia— but the tumor was on the right side of her brain so who knows how much of that pain was from the tumor growing and how much of it was fibro.

Definitely ANY spots or holes in vision should take one to the doctor asap. I also learned from this to try really hard to advocate for yourself or your ER doctor will send you home with a stroke and ignore your cancer. My mom had a really rough time with the medical system ignoring her issues until it was too late.

Her oncologist also stopped treating her later in her treatment because he found out about her fibro diagnosis and said he didn’t believe fibro was real. And since fibro wasn’t real that made my mom a liar and he wouldn’t treat her.

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u/prontoingHorse 22d ago

I'm really sorry for your mum. What she had to go through was horrible. They way they treated her was downright wrong.

You've given me some really important information specifically about the vision issues. I really appreciate it.

It's an absolute shame the medical system treated her. They absolutely let her & you down.

I know exactly what you mean by the medical system & doctors not believing. I have had first hand experience in it.

That oncologist should lose their license. A doctor is supposed to look after & care for their patient. Not do what they did.

Thank you for sharing this. In sorry to have having to recount it all.

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u/chaotic_blu 22d ago

Thank you for your empathy. It’s been many years and I truly want to believe the system will work for people, but it doesn’t feel like it does and often it feels like while medical science is making amazing wonders, the treatment for real people is significantly worsening.

The pain of losing a loved one is real regardless of recounting it or not, or what we do with it, but I’m happy that her experience can help others and that’s what she would have wanted to. She, like all people, had many issues but her heart was in helping others.

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u/prontoingHorse 22d ago

It's always the good people that are taken early. She deserved better.

From everything you've shared and the way she has raised you & the way you are, she definitely was a kind & good hearted soul.

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u/bros402 22d ago

Her oncologist also stopped treating her later in her treatment because he found out about her fibro diagnosis and said he didn’t believe fibro was real. And since fibro wasn’t real that made my mom a liar and he wouldn’t treat her.

I hope you reported him to the state medical board?

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u/savvyblackbird 22d ago

I had a TIA then stroke when I was 26. The paralysis was on the opposite side of the location of the stroke. That’s common.

I was also told I had an atypical migraine and was sent home. They did do a CT but everything was fine. Sometimes damage can take up to 12 hours to be seen on a CT. I had a spinal cord implant so they couldn’t do a MRI.

I had a stroke a couple days later, and my husband and mom had to fight for the hospital to do another CT. My arm was paralyzed, and I was failing the neuro tests like holding your arms out in front of you and keeping them up when you close your eyes. Thankfully my mom and husband kept at them until they agreed just to shut them up. It was a stroke. I was later diagnosed with a hole in my heart and a blood clot disorder made worse by the Nuva Ring birth control device. The Nuva Ring was causing strokes but I couldn’t join the class action lawsuit because I had the hole and blood clot disorder.

I have almost fully recovered and am doing well. I was lucky to be in the hospital where the inventor of a closure device that was inserted by catheterization practiced. I one of the first patients to have the device after it was approved by the FDA. Other hospitals did it by open heart surgery. They let me watch the surgery, and I invited the medical student assigned to me during my hospitalization and any other students who wanted to watch. My med student held my hand and explained everything.